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This is Your Web 2.0 World.

What Would You Do Without It?…

While Reddit is often compared to Digg, the two sites have some key differences. Reddit has a simple interface and no advertising. Reddit rankings are based on an absolute vote (+1 for hot / -1 for cold), meaning a negative vote decreases a story’s overall vote count as well as the ‘karma score’ for the user who submitted the URL. I for one love this simplicity.

This week I look at Reddit, by the numbers:

The Beginning:

* Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, then 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia.

If you don’t participate you don’t have my attention.

In 1997 Michael H. Glodhaber said that this new, fast-paced time in which we live brings with it a new type of economy: the attention economy.

“What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention.”

If a commercial is broadcast and no-one pays attention, does it make an impact?

Attention Requires Participation

People will pay attention to anything said about you and your company.

If you’re not participating, you willingly give up mindshare and fail to influence.

This picture is true too when you blog without participating.

All the anticipation! All the hype! Well, yes its true … the Sphinn Awards (aka the Sphinners) are coming.

For those of you not in the industry, the (Un-)Official Sphinn Awards recognize individual contributions from one of our favourite (yes the Canadian spelling) social watering holes (Sphinn.com).

For those of you in the industry, these presigeous awards are well … urm … awards. Some of the awards up for grabs include;

The Awards:
- The Tireless Reporter Award
- The Social Seduction Award
- Spread the Love Award
- The Fast Fingers Award
- The Frustration and Futility Award

Do you intuitively understand the strengths and weaknesses of search as it relates to all other media? I mean, most of us get that paid search has distinct pros and cons, as does organic search, but what about search in general relative to other media?

For example … why would search not be the ideal tool to create awareness of a brand new revolutionary type of laser drill for the home handyman? In the remainder of this post, I’ll explore the role of search in advertising, as it has implications for such questions.

YouTube.ca launched yesterday with a (ho hum) focus on Canada. Whooppee, funny Canadian cat tricks. Whooohoo, Avril Lavigne videos. Ooops, scratch that, copyrighted material. Whooohoo, 10 looooooooooooooooonnnnngggggggg minutes of watching ice melt from that cold place way up north.

Oh oh. Am I sounding too cynical?

Driving home last night, listening to the Toronto radio station ANATT (All News All The Time), I struggled to think how this could possibly be news? And I wondered what the business case was that could possibly warrant a Canadian YouTube site.

Office Depot’s announcement of new mobile marketing services caught my attention today. These new services include the launch of a mobile store locator, RSS feeds, text message coupons and offers, and mobile sweepstakes capabilities.

I doubt anyone’s getting exited about Office Depot RSS feeds on their mobile device and I’m not alone. According to Steve Levy, President of Market Research in Eastern Canada for IPSOS Reid, 27% of Canadian marketers agree that mobile marketing will be very important in the future with 9% indicating they are practicing it now.

This battle is a lot closer than most of you can imagine. I’m constantly hearing about how the Yellow Pages are dying and there’s no value in them. While most may say that I’m biased because of the number of years I spent in the industry, the same cannot be said for Google Analytics.

Google Analytics cannot lie, it has no biases and, thank goodness for the Yellow Pages, paints a much different picture than many so called experts. You just have to know what to look for.

Can a good search presence improve an offline marketing campaign’s results? You may be surprised to hear … ABSOLUTELY! Offline and search campaigns are actually very symbiotic in nature. See the proof abreviated in graphical form below, but also be sure to check out the full study.

The Proof:

Courtesy iProspect

The Cudos:
The study was commissioned by iProspect and was performed by Jupiter Research. It was titled iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study. Check it out! Our industry needs more of these studies performed. Google, Yahoo, ermmm MSN … please step up!

Professionally, LinkedIn is my main social network. It provides for a more focused business networking environment than most social media sites. It’s a great tool, especially for finding people, references, job postings and business opportunities. Additional benefits I’ve discovered include; the ability to talk about your professional self, link to your other Google-friendly web content and customize your profile URL. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather a potential employer/client find my LinkedIn profile on Google, before any others of me!

This week, I’m taking a look at LinkedIn, by the numbers:

The Beginning: